The present invention relates generally to systems for storing objects, and in particular, to an improved system that utilizes illuminatable smartkey housings to provide improved location visibility of the smartkey authorized to be removed therefrom.
The state of the art in object storage systems generally of the type to which the present invention relates can be most easily understood from a reading of U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,131,808, 6,431,438, and 6,609,657 (hereinafter collectively referred to as the “Assignee's Patents”), which are all commonly owned by the present Assignee, an exemplary embodiment being illustrated in FIG. 1 herein.
Specifically, in the prior art embodiment generically illustrated in FIG. 1, a system, generally indicated at 1, may have one or more smartkeys, generally indicated at 2, receivable in one or more smartkey housings 3. Each smartkey housing 3 has associated with it a respective LED 4, which is illustrated as being directly above each respective housing 3. Constructed in this manner, a user may be provided with access to one or more of the smartkeys 2, and the indication as to which smartkey the user shall be provided access to is provided by illuminating the LED 4 associated with the smartkey to which the user has been authorized to remove, the circuitry, hardware, software and associated methodology all of which is described in great detail in the Assignee's Patents.
However, the use of such LEDs in the aforementioned system 1 has been found, in some instances, to be less than desirable. For example, and as also illustrated in FIG. 1, there may occur the situation where the objects, such as large keys for example, may hang sufficiently below their own respective housing 3 thereby covering the LED 4 associated with a housing 3 located in the column directly below. For example, housings 3 which are respectively located at positions 1,G and 1,H have smartkeys with large objects 5A, 5B respectively. These objects 5A, 5B can be seen to overlie and at least partially visibly block LED 4 associated with housing 3 at the 2,H position. In the event that LED 4 associated with housing 3 at the 2,H position was illuminated, thus indicating to a user that access to the smartkey 2 disposed therein was granted, the user might not be able to clearly see it. This problem may be exacerbated if the system, or portions thereof, are “crowded” with many smartkeys 2 and/or many large objects. As such, it would be desirable to provide for a better smartkey indicator construction.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,915 appears to illustrate and describe the illumination of a translucent lens of a peg on which the object is positioned, while U.S. Pat. No. 6,039,467 describes illuminating portions of bins to assist in the location of an item by shining light from an LED into a wall of the bin. However, both of these embodiments are quite different from that which is proposed herein, for reasons of construction and functionality.
Accordingly, it is desired to provide an improved system for storing objects of the type generally described in the Assignee's Patents, but which is an improvement thereof for the reasons noted above and below, and which overcomes the aforementioned deficiencies and achieves the objectives and advantages set forth below.